Our soccer field has lights! Care of the United States Embassy

Dad and Jack engaging in one of my favorite activities.

My room.

Jack and I.

Hello again, everyone. It’s certainly been a while.

It’s been a relatively calm past few weeks, compared with the hectic goings on at the beginning of the summer. The big event to report is that Dan and Jack Winnike (my father and brother) made it down to El Pital, El Salvador in early August. Although they only stayed 3 days, we had a great time. It was nice to see my family again, and I believe that they were very interested to see a little bit of what the day to day life is like down here.

Dad and Jack took the redeye flight, so I picked them up at the airport early Saturday morning, and we passed through Suchitoto on the way to my town, stopping there long enough to enjoy a tasty lunch at one of the nicer hotels. Once back in my town, we basically took it easy and got oriented for the rest of the day. Sunday, we headed off to San Luis del Carmen (there nearby, slightly-bigger) town to go to mass. That afternoon, we went on a bit of a hike up in the hills above my town to see where I planted corn this year. If the deer and other animals leave it alone, I should have more corn than I know what to do with come early November. On Monday, we headed out to San Salvador to give the travelers quicker access to the airport for their flight on Tuesday morning. We had another great dinner to top off a relaxing evening. All in all, it was a great trip.

Coinciding with my family’s trip was a visit from Tamar, the volunteer who lived in the same town as me for my first 3 months of service. Seeing Tamar again was great, who herself seemed to really enjoy some break time after finishing her masters at MIT.

In other, news, I also made it back to Lake Coatepeque for the second time, which has now cemented its place as my favorite vacation spot within El Salvador. I went with one of my Peace Corps friends and her friend who was visiting from the United States. The lake is in the crater of a huge volcano. The views are beautiful and the water is crystal clear, which is an extreme rarity in this country where 95% of all bodies of water are heavily polluted. I only stayed for one night, but it was a nice break.

In work-related news, we finally completely finished the drainage project that we started many weeks ago. Personally, I’m quite happy with the results as there’s no longer foul smelling water stagnating in the streets. I think we’ll notice the real difference in the summertime, though, when the rain stops and the streets start to dry up even more.

We also, briefly, got back to work on the water tank. Our job was to plaster the walls so that moss and mold wouldn’t start growing on the bricks. This necessitated the less-than-pleasant job of emptying on out the 5cm of standing water (mixed with assorted debris) from the existing tank that had been stagnating for 4 months. While trying to make a siphon, I inadvertently swallowed some of said water. The good news is that I’m not dead, yet. A more fortunate event was the discovery of 2 fresh water crabs in the tank which were fried and eaten shortly thereafter. The following day, 6 of us went to work at 6:00AM and finished the job by 2:00PM.

Now that the school year is back upon us, I anticipate being a bit busier with work related to the water project as the Rice University Engineers Without Borders are back on the case. Additionally, we’re trying to get our town council moved into high gear to be prepared for the possibility that they’ll need to handle the project on their own in the event that we don’t finish it while I’m still here.

I think that’s all for now, enjoy the college football. Go Irish.

YES Students

Working on the road (+ Don Andres' butt).

Completed church.

Mural of San Antonio

Relaxing at the Waterfalls. * * * After having lent my camera out for the past 3 weeks, I’ve got it back, which means I can finally post pictures.

I’m doing well, having just finished up a string of very busy weeks that began with preparations for the Engineers Without Borders, and just finished with my hosting of 3 high school students and 2 teachers from YES Academy, in Houston, Texas. I was put into contact with this most recent group by a friend of Tamar’s (my site’s previous volunteers). Seeing as we were working hard on the water project right about up to the day that the kids came (not to mention hosting the Bellarmine Prep delegation for lunch the day before) I was a bit apprehensive about my lack of planning. I’m happy to report, though, that things went very well, much better than I expected.

The students and their teachers were very relaxed and just happy to be in my community. After a day of rest and getting to know the community, we got to work. We divided into to groups to tackle two separate projects: painting El Pital’s church and installing a drainage system in the town’s center. Both were hard work, and involved lots of dirty clothes.

I spent the majority of time tearing up the road to put the drainage in, which involved breaking the road’s concrete with a heavy metal bar and a sledge hammer. My hands became only mildly blistered as I had the good fortune to have worked up some nice calluses while working on the water project. I certainly appreciated the group’s patience and good attitude on this stage of the project.

While we were down in the community’s center, the other group was doing an excellent job painting the church. We had the good fortune that one of the chaperones was an art teacher, and that the students were pretty artistically inclined. Not only did they give the church a much needed new look, they also did an awesome mural of San Antonio (the town’s patron Saint). Happily the culmination of this work coincided with the town’s “fiestas patronales” which celebrated San Antonio’s feast day. Everyone in the community was duly impressed.

The fiestas were a good time and an interesting experience for the group. It included the customary fireworks and pupusa and pasteles sales, in addition to a dance presentation. My favorite part, though, was the palo encebado. Sounding innocous enough, this was one of the more fantastically dangerous/entertaining activities I’ve witnessed during my time here. It involves climbing a 35ft pole to try and reach the “prize” taped to the top. As if this wasn’t difficult enough, they coat the entire pole with lard. Needless to say, the pole was erected on hard concrete, without any padding. This is what a country looks like without personal injury lawyers. Don’t tell his mother, but one of the students gave it his best shot and, while he didn’t quite get to the money, at least he didn’t die. Thank God for small blessings.

We capped off the high schoolers’ visit with a trip to some nearby waterfalls (see the picture above), where we made soup and jumped off of rocks into the pool below.

As of now, I’m trying to get back to my long-neglected responsibilities, like washing clothes and keeping my house in order, not to mention resuming my classes in the local school. We also need to continue with the drainage project as we weren’t quite able to finísh while the kids were in town. Hopefully, in its finality, this project turns out as well as the church.

God bless America. Happy 4th.

Bellarmine students

Leaving in grand style (just as a downpour began).

It's been raining a lot here.

Laying bricks and making soup.

The workers, enjoying lunch.

The tank's done! * * * Hey everyone.

Winter has arrived in full force here in El Salvador. A tropical storm hit the country two weeks ago, which involved pretty much constant rain for almost two whole weeks. There’s been little sunshine since then, which is good for the crops, but bad for washing/drying clothes. I’m hoping for a bit more sunshine in the days to come.

I’ve certainly been keeping busy over the past few weeks. Following the departure of the Rice University Engineers Without Borders, we’ve kept up the work on the water project, building the walls to complement the excellent foundation that the students helped build.

This process actually ended up taking twice as long I thought. Unfortunately, luck was no longer on our side, as the rains finally came, and nearly all of the town’s able-bodied men rushed to the fields to plant their corn crop, which left us with a serious lack of labor. Still, the mayor helped us out in a major way by sending 3 workers who came and worked from 6am until 12. These there plus myself and the foreman formed the group that did the majority of the work. We rewarded ourselves for our good work by making a soup (the Salvadorean equivalent of a barbeque) on the last day (see above), which nearly got rained out, as a heavy storm passed through. Fortunately, we had good company for the situation in the form of 2 professional masons, who quickly erected a little hut to protect both us and the soup from the rain.

As we’ve finished work on the tank, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, as I just hosted a group of 20 Bellarmine students yesterday, and am now picking up a group of high school students who will be staying for the next 10 days. I’m already looking forward to taking some type of vacation once this last group leaves.

As far as the Bellarmine students, it was great to see a new group of students. Again, this year, there was some mishaps boarding the ferry to cross the lake, but they did end up arriving safely alter nearly losing the bus in the water. I wasn’t there to witness this spectical but I’m told that it involved some tense moments. We had a nice meal and I shared a bit about my experiences.

As for the group coming today, I have to be honest that I haven’t exactly been able to do as much planning for their trip as I would have liked. We’ll be working on painting the church during the first few days. After this, we plan on building a drainage system for the a portion of the community. Hopefully, this turns out well.

Enjoy the photos.

View from inside the newly roofed "upper tank"

Rice students digging the foundation.

Some of the people who came to pour the new tank's foundation

Rice EWB students, plus me. * * * I’m back. I know it’s been a long time, but I’ll blame that on the past few weeks having been exceptionally busy, at least by Peace Corps standards.

The vast majority of my time over the past few weeks has been occupied by the water project that the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) from Rice University are working on with my community. I’m happy to report that, as of now, we’ve completed the foundation for the lower tank, which complements the first tank that we built in May of 2007. This is a great relief to me, as it was never 100% clear that we would actually be able to build the tank (which happens to be an essential part of the proposed water project) until the last minute. With the foundation poured, there’s no going back now.

Preparations for the arrival of the EWB students began about 5 weeks ago. We began with the ambitious goal of visiting all of the houses in the community to ask members for a few days of labor as well as money or food for the students’ meals. This took quite a bit of time, and the town council members were a bit less than enthusiastic, but we did end up visiting the vast majority of the houses and wound up with a decent amount of money and food.

Following our community-wide tour, we began working on digging the foundation for the tank site. This involved us digging nearly 2 meters down in a pile of mud mixed with large rocks, with only pickaxes, shovels, a sledgehammer, and our bare hands at our disposal. Work started at 6 in the morning, and oftentimes lasted until 6 at night. The work was exhausting but, on the select days that a large number of people happened to arrive, the friendly banter made the time spent pretty enjoyable. Needless to say, I haven’t had much time to keep up with my chores, so my house is a total mess and my clothes are in serious need of washing. I’m proud to say, though, that I still have a few pairs of clean pants, as I chose to wear the same pair of pants for the entire week in an effort to cut down on the amount of clothes that I would need to wash.

Work was going slowly, but at least we were making headway. However, as we kept digging lower, more water began springing up in the area, which we believed to be coming from the cracked spring box located above the site. This increase in water cast the tank’s construction into doubt, yet again, and we called off work to await the arrival and analysis of the EWB students. On the plus side, this development freed me up to handle some more mundane, but equally important, tasks like where the students would sleep and what they would eat.

With these issues more or less squared away, our guests arrived last Sunday, and we got to work Monday morning. To my great relief, they believed that the amount of water in the site excavation wouldn’t pose a problem. We dug there all week, again for 6 until 6, and arranged the rebar that would go into the tank. Our work culminated in a very successful pouring of the foundation, where nearly 50 community members arrived to lend a hand.

This coming week, we’ll be working on our own to build the walls to the new tank. Hopefully, the community still has some energy left so that we can see this project to its conclusion.

Good Friday Procession

Huge, Good Friday, lunch with Kyle

Kyle at the beach. * * * Kyle and I had a fantastic time, if I do say so myself, during his recent visit. I’d say that the highlight had to be the first few days that we spent in my community. Kyle’s flight arrived on Thursday night. We picked him up in the mayor’s dump truck, and made it back to the community late that evening.

The following day, Good Friday, is the most celebrated of all the days around Easter. We went to the Stations of the Cross in the morning, and were invited to a traditional lunch of fish soup, which also included atol (a heavy, traditional Salvadoran drink), stewed fruit, avocado, and cheese. We topped this all off with a dessert called torrejas (think french toast) at another of my friends’ house. For the remainder of the day, we hung out in the community.

The next day was more of the same gluttony. After playing soccer in the morning, Kyle and I were brought not one, but two soups for lunch, in addition to the tamales and various fruits that we had already received. So much for showing off to Kyle my Salvadoran cooking skills. The food that we were given was better anyway.

That afternoon, we made our way to the nearby tourist mecca, Suchitoto. There, we met up with a few other volunteers, and ended up spending the rest of the evening with them. The following day, we took it easy, poolside, at the deluxe Los Almendros hotel. After Easter Sunday Mass, the following day, we made our way to the beach, meeting up with another of my volunteer friends along the way.

The beach was also a lot of fun, as beach trips always are. It was pretty tough to beat the previous four days, though. For the last day, we hopped a pickup back to San Salvador, where we stayed in another beautiful hotel and ate even more delicious food.

Since Kyle’s been gone, I’ve been getting back into my routine. Giving classes in the school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, computer classes on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the 1000 other odd jobs that we need to address as a community, particularly with regards to our water project.

Speaking of the water project, the Engineers Without Borders will be coming back to Cantón El Pital on May 11 to construct tank number 2 in for our water system. As expected, there’s a huge amount of planning and preparation that needs to go on in order for this visit to be a success. I’m not panicking yet, but certainly will be soon as we have a tendency to leave all things to the last minute (many of which never end up getting taken care of). Still, with some valuable experience under our belts from the recent visit I hope that things will go more smoothly.

Last week, I hosted a new trainee who is living and taking classes at the same lovely San Vicente training center that I frequented last year. It was a good experience showing the new guy around and brought back lots of memories of my time as a trainee. It was kinda cool to consider how far I’ve come in a year and how drastically my perception of the Peace Corps mission and our role in development has changed. It’s a frustrating time to be in training, but the guy who visited me seemed to be handling things pretty well.

While here, I showed him the things that I had been working on, as well as some of the shortcomings that I’ve had with some of the projects on which I’ve worked. We visited some families who benefitted from a latrine project as well as a stove project. The issue is that families were not using correctly the infrastructure that we provided to them, which basically made them useless. I chose this to show the trainee the importance of sustainable development, and how, oftentimes, the actual construction is the easy part. The hardest and most important part of development is training people well and changing life-long habits so that they use and maintain properly what has been given to them.

Odds and ends: I’m back playing soccer, and have yet to score a goal. As I seem to have been permanently relegated to defense I don’t see me ending my scoreless streak anytime in the near future. Yesterday, I was stung by my first scorpion. Let me tell you, it’s a doozy. While the intense pain only lasts about a minute, its poison sticks with you for almost a full day. My lips and tongue still feel slightly numb, and have been since yesterday afternoon. I’m feeling much better though.

Until later.

Happy Easter.

Having completed another successful, albeit minor, stage of our town’s water project the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) have gone back to their studies at Rice University, and my life has somewhat normalized. During there most recent trip, the EWB took more studies to determine a suitable site to construct our town’s second tank. Additionally, we worked on building distribution points around the community where each house will connect to the pipeline. To protect the delicate, PVC, piping from cars, vandals, and cows, these distribution points are housed in small cinderblock and tin structures. While here, we built 7 of these distribution points which will service the upper (water-less) half of the community.

In addition to the physical work, the EWB and the community had several meeting to discuss the project’s direction, some fine points, and the collective expectations. I think that it was a good chance for the community to air some of its thoughts about areas that both sides could improve upon, as well as understand the constraints that the EWB faces as it works on this project. Personally, it was helpful to learn more about the EWB and how it approves and allocates funds for projects.

During the project, I found myself longing for the olden days of the previous project, when Tamar handled the work’s logistical elements, and I was free to just work. This stage involved less physical labor, but still included of programming mix-ups that needed to be dealt with. I can say that I have a new appreciation now for how difficult it is to simply feed and house 8 people for 9 days.

My real hope is that the town council and community leaders have learned from this experience about the amount of planning and preparation necessary for staging a successful project. In April, the EWB plan to return to work on the second tank, which will be a much larger and difficult project. We got away with some minor problems and a lack of sufficient preparation, and will certainly need to address these issues for the project’s next stage.

So, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire as now I have to deal with another big project: enjoying myself with my college friend, Kyle Martin. In reality, I’m thrilled to have Kyle coming and think that it will be a great time to relax and enjoy myself. Kyle comes in today, and we’ll be picking him up from the airport in the mayor’s office’s garbage truck. Welcome to El Salvador! I plan on spending 2 nights in my community before heading to lovely Suchitoto and then the beach.

Kyle is in luck because Semana Santa (Holy Week) is in full swing. The mangos, jocotes, and cashew fruits are ripening and the old ladies are baking like crazy for the family members who are visiting home from around the country. Tomorrow is Good Friday and is Holy Weeks most celebrated and observed day here (including Easter), so we’ll be looking forward to the always popular Via Cruces (Stations of the Cross) which will include life-sized figures of Jesus, Mary and other biblical mainstays.

In other news, my camera is broken, hence the lack of photos in the last two blogs. IT had a good run, may it rest in peace. Fear not, as I’ll be starting today to save up for, well, nothing is really in my price range these days, unless Kodak wants to come out with a disposable digital camera. Until then, I’ll try and get my friends to mail me their best pictures.

Hey everyone. Well, it’s almost March, which jeans that the Engineer’s Without Borders from Rice University will be arriving soon (tomorrow). As such, we’ve been feverishly preparing for their stay as we, typically, left all tasks to the last possible minute.

So what are we getting ready for anyway? Good question. Previously, we were going to build the second water tank in the community, which would be use to store water coming out of a spring that we would pump to the already-constructed upper tank. It turns out that we no longer have confidence in the suitability of the construction site to support the weight of the tank. As such, we will be taking more soil samples at the site to determine if we can actually build there.

Additionally, in the coming week, we will be building the “headers” for the community’s piping system. In essence, these are above-ground distribution points, spread through the community, to which each house will connect to their homes. We’ll be building small concrete boxes to house these headers, protecting them from car and cow traffic.

In order to make this work possible, we’ve been designing menus, buying food and materials, and preparing a house in the community for the engineers’ arrival. Hopefully, the work will culminate in a successful trip.

In addition to preparing for the engineers, I’ve also established myself in the school, giving weekly classes to grades 3-4 and 5-6. As of now, we’ve mostly been talking about how we communicate, and what constitutes good and bad communication. Theoretically, this is establishing a framework, encouraging the kids to respect me and each other, which will pay future dividends in the class.

I’ve enjoyed giving my talks, and I think that the kids have had some fun as well. Giving these classes on a consistent basis has been a big benefit for me, as the kids are starting to get more comfortable and open up, which makes the time a lot more fun and rewarding. Unfortunately, though, I’ll need to take 2 weeks off for while the engineers are here working. Hopefully, I’ll get back into the swing of things when I get back into the school.

I’ve also been directing/helping some high school students that I asked to give computer classes at the grade school. As there’s about 40 students and only 3 computers, I needed some help to give computer classes. As of now, it looks like some of the high school students’ knowledge of the computers is actually surpassed by some of the students that I’ve been teaching for a while. Still, we now have the high school’s professional computer teacher enlisted to provide support, so I hope that the quality of instruction will continue to improve.

On the sporting front, I was able to participate in the last 2 soccer excursions, one of which was across the lake to lovely Suchitoto. It’s been a lot of fun to get back playing sports, and hanging out with the rest of the guys from my community. I’m excited to say that, right now, El Pital’s the soccer fielding is being repaired and upgraded with a retaining wall (part of the field had been washing away into the river) care of the mayor’s office. This should be done in the next few weeks, at which point we’ll start playing in the community again.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Marisol and I at the scholarship ceremony.

Scholarship recipients. * * * Hi again, everyone.

School’s back in session here, so it looks like I’ll have a little bit more routine via classes and lectures that I’m beginning to give in the school. This past week, I gave my first two classes to grades 3-4 and 5-6 (each “class” includes two grade levels). In these classes, we’ll be talking about basic hygiene, as well as life skills and planning. I’m excited to be working with the kids, and they seem to be excited that a crazy gringo is coming and giving them a break from their regular classes.

In the afternoons, I’m back working with Maria del Carmen and our youth group, twice a week. On Tuesdays, we talk about Salvadoran culture and heritage (subjects which about which the students are, unfortunately, almost completely ignorant). On Wednesdays, we have been doing arts and crafts, involving making designs with corn husks. The kids really seem to enjoy the arts and crafts. If we can get enough completed, we hope to take the kids to the nearby tourist destination, Suchitoto, and sell some.

With regards to the much-anticipated water project, we’ve hit a bit of a road block, as the EWB (Engineers Without Borders) have decided that they need to take more soil samples for the proposed tank site before they can commit to actually building the tank. As a result, we will actually not begin the tank construction at the end of this month, as we had planned. Instead, the engineer’s will now come to take more soil samples with the hope that they will build the tank the next time that they come down. Needless to say, the community is a bit disappointed, but, hopefully, their trip down will still be a productive one.

Last week, I translated for a church group from the Ohio who were interested in establishing a sister parish with the church where I live. They visited various communities in the area and talked with our priest. It was interesting to see and hear people’s reactions to the communities and the Salvadoran way of life. To a certain extent, it showed me how desensitized I’ve become to a lot of the “oddities” of the rural Salvadoran way of life. Hopefully, things work out and the parish will get some support, as they could certainly use it.

Recently, a girl from my community, her father, and I attended a scholarship ceremony in San Salvador. Marisol (the scholarship recipient) and I were fortunate to get a $300 Peace Corps scholarship to cover the expenses for her 3rd and final year of high school. Best of luck to Marisol. See the above picture.

We’ll that’s all the news for now. Let’s see if the Patriots can pull off the upset tonight at the Super Bowl.

Church in Leon.

Granada

Hanging out in a fort (Granada)

Hiking with my buddies on the "World's largest freshwater island."

* * *

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

I just got back to El Salvador, after spending an awesome 2 weeks at home, in which I managed to gain 5 pounds. Needless to say, I took full advantage of a seemingly endless supply of Christmas cookies and my folks’ well-stocked fridge. Seeing my friends and family was great as even Grandma Carr and Aunt Maureen made it out to California for a visit.

The trip was also a very productive one for Maria del Carmen, as she was fortunate to receive a few recent donations. A HUGE thank you to all of you who have helped out.

I’ll be returning to my site tomorrow. There, I hope to continue with the momentum that we built up right before I took off. After really struggling to get our town council moving on a few projects (water and latrines) for several weeks, we actually managed to have 3 consecutive meetings where over half the members showed up. Naturally, this facilitated some actual progress. We should be starting work on the water tank’s roof in the near future. I also have my fingers crossed that the last 3 latrines will be finished when I get back to El Pital.

Before leaving, I also had a great 2 week computer course with some of the kids from the community, which occupied the lion’s share of my time before I left. The work was pretty intense, but I think that the kids enjoyed themselves a bit and learned a lot. It’s impressive to see how well children, who have absolutely no experience, can intuit how a computer works in such a short time.

In other news, we capped off the town’s festivals right before I left. There we 3 whole days of bullfighting/riding and 2 dances, one with a live band. It was a lot of fun to see people decked out in their cowboy duds. Also, the atmosphere was great as everyone was in a good mood.

That’s about all the news for now. In the near future, I hope to get the plans for the 2nd water tank’s foundation, start work on the roof, and get an application for more composting latrines written. We’ll see how things shake out.

Above are some of the long-overdue photos from Nicaragua.

Here we are in Managua, Nicaragua (and it's the only photo I have right now). From left: Mike, Dan, Aaron, and me. Unfortunately, the beautiful Nicaraguan on the left was not a permanent part of our entourage.* * *

Q. Where has Kevin been? He hasn't updated his blog in like a month.A. He's been lazy AND in Nicaragua.

So, that's what's been going on since you've heard from me last. I've been keeping up with the usual hanging out on hammocks, agricultural work, teaching kids how to magically change font size and color in my weekly computer class, and taking a vacation to Nicaragua.

Taking my first real vacation in 9 months, 3 friends and I (see above) headed out of San Salvador on Nov. 4th for the largest country in Central America. Opting to save $10 on bus fare, we decided to skip the direct bus that would take us to Managua, and take "chicken buses" the entire way. Not knowing what time the first bus heading out East to Santa Rosa would leave, we decided to show up at the bus terminal at 4:00 AM. Fortunately, a bus was leaving only 40 minutes later, so we climbed aboard (nota bene: a near complete lack of planning would be a recurring theme throughout the duration of our trip). This was the first of 7 Macro/Microbuses and 1 Bicycle rickshaw that we would ride that day. 14 hours and 2 countries later, we arrived in Leon, Nicaragua.

Leon was a very cool city, very different from what you may see in El Salvador. It felt safe, and it was good to see people enjoying themselves on the city streets after dark. There's also lots of colonial architecture and, being a college town, lots of young people and things to do at night.

The following day, we abruptly decided to head off for Nicaragua's other feature city, Granada. Once the wealthiest city and most important city in Central America, Granada also has a lot of interesting history and architecture. Before the Panama Canal, it was the nearest port to the Pacific Ocean, which is reached by a large river and Lake Nicaragua (home to the world's only freshwater sharks). We spent 2 nights there, going to a nearby lake and touring the lakes islands by boat.

Next, we took a 4 hour ferry ride to the world's largest freshwater island: Ometepe, which consists of two active volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. While there, we hung out at the beach, and climbed halfway up the island's volcano.

After Ometepe, we spent the night in the unremarkable town of San Jorge, on the other side of Lake Nicaragua, and the last 2 nights in Managua, the capital.

Overall, I had a great time. Nicaragua, has good food (the actually eat meat), and lots of cools things to see, as well as lots of natural beauty. The one drawback is that it's getting pretty touristy, which means getting hit up for money and offered horse-drawn carriage rides 50 times per day. I promise to post some pictures soon to add some color to these descriptions.

Now that I'm back home, I'm working with our new town council, trying to get things up and running. Before leaving, I left some tasks with members of the community. Needless to say, none of them were accomplished in my absence, so we're scrambling now to get our feet under ourselves, particularly as we're getting ready to construct stage 2 of our water project in March.

In other news, I'm looking for funding for my counterpart and a very important member of my community who has lost her funding and may not be able to continue working in El Pital. If you would like to support Maria del Carmen, please send me a note (KWinnike@gmail.com), and I can forward you additional information.

Hope everyone is doing well back home. Happy Thanksgiving.

I hate kittens. Even cute ones that are born in my house.

If you look closely, you can see that this is no "single" rainbow.

Garbage campaign.

Mom. I'm wearing the pants that you sent me, and I'm soaked.

Hello again everyone.

I really need to get better at updating this blog. The lack of a functioning computer has really made it difficult to write entries to the blog without massive cyber cafe bills and lots of spelling/grammar errors. In any event, we'll make do.

What's new in El Pital, El Salvador? Not a whole lot. It's the winter, so it's still raining. I was able to capture a sweet double rainbow though with my camera. We're also trying to hit the ground running with the new town council that was elected recently. The Rice University Engineers without Borders is back in action, after taking the majority of the summer off for some hectic internship work and some relaxing family time. This is great/bad news, as it means that we can get our water project up and running again, but means that I'll have to go around bugging community members to get their acts together so we can make some progress. Step 1 involves finding a skilled laborer who can build the roof to the water tank that we constructed in May. Hopefully, we'll address this topic in this Saturday's meeting. Well, frankly, what I'm really hoping is that everyone just shows up to the meeting. Making actual progress may be a bit much to ask.

What else have I been up to? Growing a hideous goatee. Check it out in the picture above. Perhaps I'm getting off easy here as the Salvadorans may think that nasty facial hair is the hight of style in the United States.

I've also been eating cookies and banana bread that my Sharon Winnike (mom) was fantastic enough to send my way. One of the pitfalls of the collective society is that I was obliged to give away 19 of the 24 cookies that I got (not that I really need to eat 2 dozen cookies anyway. By the way, Mom, the Salvadorans LOVED the cookies, and are already trying to get me to bring cookies back from my trip home for the holidays.

The last major undertaking that I had was a garbage campaign this past week. For some perspective, in most Salvadoran communities, there isn't any trash collection. As a result, the more conscientious folks burn their trash (which includes lots of plastic). The less community-conscious people just throw their trash out behind their house, or in a nearby stream where it builds up into a mountain which either a river sweeps away, they burn in the summer time, or just keep growing. Needless to say, this activity poses a host of health problems.

Recently, the mayor's office got a garbage truck to collect trash 2x per week. In an effort to clean up the mountains of trash, we put on a trash campaign, where we asked people to collect their trash, which the garbage truck would pick up. Besides getting caught in the afternoon rain and the garbage truck showing up 6 hours late (hey, it's Salvadoran time), things went off pretty smoothly, and we collected a lot of trash.

Well, that's about all the news for now. Hope that everyone is doing well back in the US.

Happy October.

It's hard for me to believe that I've already been in El Salvador for 8 months. Time's really flown.

Well, I'm happy to report that all of the 13 families who received latrines have finshed the construction. Aside from the small problems that we had, I'm really proud of the community and the work that they did on the project. During the busiest time of the year, everyeone was able to dig the pits for the latrines and build the walls in about 2 weeks. Additionally, we actually came in $300 under budget, which we hope to use for 3 additional latrines. In an effort to have a more fair process and limit gossip, I'm advocating that the town council use a raffle to decide who receives the new latrines.

I'm still working on getting some photos up of the completed latrines, so we'll see how that turns out.

Recently, El Pital elected a new town council. Scheduled to begin at 2:00, we were just able to gather the necessary 26 citizens to take part in the voting at around 3:30. While the turnout was a bit low, the attendees' enthusiasm made up for the lack of numbers. The council now consists of about 50% new members, including our new 23 year old president. Primarily, I'm really hoping that the elected members stick with the council, and don't stop coming to meetings without telling anyone why. While it may be asking too much, I'm also hoping that people work well together and show some committment, as we're going to need to get our butts in gear again as the water project will soon ramp up again. We have our first meeting tomorrow (Saturday), and I'm excited to get a look at the group dynamic.

Last week, I returned home one evening to find that a bat had found its way inside my mosquito netting. Given it's apparent inability to shield me from large flying mammals, my mosquito net's ability to keep me safe from the much nimbler/smaller mosquitos has been cast into doubt.

I'VE BOUGHT A TICKET HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS! I'll be home for a week this coming Christmas. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to see many of you.

These are pictures of the bullfights that happened a few months ago. They are taking place in the nearby town of San Luis del Carmen.

Bullfights

Riding the bull

Spectators

Hey everyone. The good news is that the hurricane pretty much passed my part of the country by, only leaving us with a few days of light rain. This also allowed us to hold on to most of the materials that we purchased from the nearby hardware store.

More good news, we've finished building our first latrine. The latrine that we completed was of the composting variety, which means that it should last just about indefinitely and will not pollute the groundwater or overflow during the rainy season. That we finished a composting latrine first is ironic because the composting latrines require about 4 times as much work as the standard, pit latrines, which no one has yet been able to complete.

Personally, I've been spending the lion's share of my time helping to build the latrine in question so that I can get a better understanding of exactly how to build the thing. By the next time I post, I hope to have a photo of the completed product.

Aside from the latrine construction, I've been keeping up with my youth groups on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Last Friday, I also began giving computer classes to the kids at the local school. We're starting off by getting the kids familiarized with the computer room rules and basic things like how to use a mouse and a keyboard. Fortuntely, these basics don't require me to spend a whole lot of time coming up with a lesson plan. Regarding English classes, these will start the weekend of the 22nd, and it looks like several people are excited about them.

In other news, this past Tuesday was a special day in the community. Unfortunately for a young bull and fortunately for the town's people, the animal injured it's neck while trying to evade some of it's handlers. Unable to move, the animal was then "gifted" to the town. Scores of people, young and old, made the rough, muddy, 2 mile walk out to the grazing area where the cow was slaughtered, quartered, and parcelled out on the spot. I myself made out with a sack full of about 35 pounds of meat and bone that I was able to share with some of the families around town.

Thats all for now.

Happy Labor Day everyone.

After my recent training session, I've gotten back into the swing of things and have been spending quite a bit of time in my site.

Aside from my usual responsibilities, the majority of my time has been taken up by a new latrine project that we've just begun. Using funds that the previous volunteer solicited, we've been able to get some money together to build approximately 15 latrines in the community. Currently, we're in the process of building 13 latrines, but we've got a bit of money left over, so we may be able to build 2 or 3 more.

The whole latrine building process has been pretty extensive, as few of the people are willing to start building the actual latrines now that the materials have arrived. As such, I've been spending time trying to get people to commit to some type of deadline by which the latrines must be completed. Additionally, I've been spending time explaning to people why they, unfortunately, did not get selected to receive a latrine.

For the next two weeks, it looks like I'll be helping masons with the actual building of the latrines, which should be interesting and fun. As a matter of fact, today, we starting by building the foundation for one of the "composting" latrines, which don't require the construction of a hole.

In other news, buoyed by my recent success, I've decide to plant yet more corn. Hopefully, this will turn out as well as my first endeavor, and we'll have another harvest at the beginning of November.

Last, I'm told that a hurricane is headed for Central America. While we're not going to be affected by the hurricane's winds, Peace Corps is telling us to be ready for lots of rain, which I'm hoping will not wash away too much of the sand that we're using for the latrine project. In any event, we hope that everything turns out well.

Hope all is well in the U.S.

Hello everyone.

Well, the long awaited corn harvest did indeed come. Life is good as I've been eating every sweet corn-based treat that I can get my hands on, and I've had plenty of corn left over to give to my neighbors in a feeble attempt to repay them for the countless pounds of free cheese, beans, and other vegetables that they've given me.

Well, the past 2 weeks have been pretty busy, and it looks like they're only going to be getting busier, at least for the near future.

Two weeks ago, I finally finished my community census, and compiled all of the data, which was a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. Officially, my town has 111 homes and 361 residents. I've also begun working on my town's latrine project, which was actually left over from Tamar's (the previous volunteer) efforts. As such, I've recently learned that we're quite a bit behind on the project. Currently, we're scrambling to get the project completed by the end of September. the project will included the construction of 9 latrines as well as 2 latrine-health education lectures.

With regards to our community's brand new computers, both the students and teachers are really excited to begin using them. A bit antsy himself, our school director showed the computers to his class and, not knowing any other functions, taught his students how to play games and listen to music. Upon learning this information, a nearby volunteer and I figured that setting up rules for computer usage and classes for the teachers was certainly necessary.

Last, I think that I'll I'm going to yield to the repeated requests to give English classes, so I'll need to develop a curriculum for that.

This past week, my Rural Health and Sanitation program had our in service training, which took place up in coffee-growing, mountain town of Apaneca. The weather was miserable, rainy and colder than I thought was possible in El Salvador. Still, it was nice to hear some uplifting stories and see my friends from training.

Following the training, some friends and I took advantage of our proximity to a nearby national park, named Bosque Imposible, to get some hiking in. Fortunately, the weather cooperated for our trip, and we actually had some sunshine for our hike. While small, the park was beautiful and had some interesting wildlife. It was interesting/surprising to finally see an area in El Salvador untouched by agriculture. My camera was out of batteries, but some friends will be sending some pictures my way which I hope to include in my next post.

Thats about all the news for now.

Hotel at El Tamarindo

Our beach chairs at El Tamarindo

Hotel at Isla Meanguera

At least the 30 minute walk had a nice view.

At the beach in Meanguera * * *

Last week, Mom came to visit, and I miss her already. Or is it that I miss sleeping in hotel rooms, having access to running water, and eating food other than beans…? Whatever the reason, I was sure sorry to see Mom go as we really did have a great time.

We started off the visit by renting a car and driving to the far-East side of the country. Mom adjusted quickly to the lawless Salvadoran roads and we were soon making good time, flying past big rigs on narrow two lane roads; that is until we were stopped by three consecutive road extended areas of road work. This cloud’s silver lining was that this break gave me a chance to sample the 3 different baked goods that Mom was generous enough to bring me.

That afternoon, we arrived at our first destination: El Tamarindo, which is notable for its beach with no waves. The hotel itself was underwhelming, but the beach did have a nice view and the location was in a cool, very un-touristy town. The highlight was having a delicious shrimp dinner on the beach, while watching a distant electric storm play off the water.

The following day, we went to the port in La Union to catch a boat to our next stop, Isla Meanguera. We were immediately impressed as the hotel was much nicer and cheaper than our stay at Tamarindo. We grabbed some lunch and decided to head off to the beach which as supposed to be either a 30 minute or 1 hour walk depending on which route you took. Doing some quick math, we determined that a 30 minute walk was indeed superior to a 1 hour walk, so we decided to head off with our host, Richard’s, hearty endorsement. Over 1 hour and several bleeding toes later, we returned to our hotel, after coming within roughly 30 feet of the beach. These 30 feet, though, wound up being a nearly sheer cliff as the trail had been very washed out by recent rains, so we decided to try our luck with the 1 hour route, the next day.

The beach ended up being well worth the wait and the quite difficult walk. We spent most of Friday hanging out at the nearly uninhabited beach with Celia (another Peace Corps volunteer from my group) and her boyfriend Jason, who also happened to be taking a vacation at the island.

On Saturday, we woke up bright and early to catch the 5 A.M. boat back to the mainland. On the way to my site, we passed through San Vicente, the site of my training. There, we visited my host family, who served Mom and me lunch. After 3 months, it was actually very nice seeing my host family again, and they seemed very pleased to meet Mom. Following San Vicente, we passed through Suchitoto on the way to El Pital, which gave me the opportunity to drink a real espresso on Mom’s dime.

Our time in my site was a whirlwind of visiting with people, Mass, handing out baked goods, rabbit cooking, receiving gifts of cucumber (11 in all), and listening to locals remark on how “joven” (young) my Mom looked. I even managed to fit a 2 hour town council meeting into my schedule. While exhausting, the 2 days in my site were a lot of fun and the people were absolutely thrilled to meet my mother. I’m also happy that it ended up being Mom’s favorite part of the trip.

For the last day, we headed into the capital for a few last moments of comfort and modernity at the Sheraton Presidente. That evening, we headed out for a very tasty meal to what was likely one of the nicest restaurants in San Salvador, which, ironically, ended up making Mom sick. I’m just happy that it was at the end of the trip instead of the beginning. The following morning, she headed off and I returned home to El Pital.

Unfortunately, Peace Corps is not all fun and vacations, so I returned home to get back to work. I’m proud to report that a water chlorination tool that we built a few weeks ago is now fully functional and giving our town more consistently clean and cheaper water.

In other news, as a result of Tamar and the community’s solicitations, the community’s school just received its first ever computers from the World Computer Exchange. I set up the computers, and was able to astound onlookers with my knowledge of which plug corresponded to the mouse and which to the keyboard. Essentially, what all of this means is that it looks like I’ll be giving computer classes in the near future.

Back to the fun. This weekend, El Salvador commemorates the Dia del Salvador del Mundo, with a week long celebration. Our town had the customary dance, in addition to food sales and a ring toss. Earlier that day, we also had another “carrera de cinta,” in which horse riders attempt to spear rings with a pen which are suspended by wire over the soccer field.

To close the celebration, we had a four team soccer tournament, with 2 teams representing El Pital, and 2 other teams from neighboring towns. Playing with the town’s B-team, we put together a good showing, but luck was just not on our side as we were narrowly defeated by the count of 6-1. The 3rd place game was marginally better as we only lost 2-0. On the bright side, the El Pital A-team ended up winning the whole tournament and taking home the $40 first place prize.

Time is drawing near for the corn cob harvest, and the excitement is palpable. Unable to resist, I jumped the gun this morning and ate one of my nearly-fully-ripe corn cobs, which wound up being pretty tasty.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Tamar's Last Day

Church in Nearby San Luis del Carmen

"Carrera de Cinta"

View of Cerron Grande from Suchitoto * * *

El Pital lost one of its own last Monday when Tamar left the community to continue her studies at MIT. During her two years of service, she was able to contribute a huge amount to the community, and spread the Peace Corps’ good name in the community, which will certainly make my job easier. We’ll certainly feel her absence.

On the bright side, Tamar’s departure was not without some fanfare, as it happened to coincide with the feast day of Maria del Carmen, which is a holiday in my community. As with all holidays, we had full day of bullfights. Fear not animal lovers, bulls are far too valuable to be killed or even treated roughly, so this bullfight only featured milder events, such as bull riding and “toreando,” which basically looks like trying like hell to make the bull angry and then running away from it. As exciting as this all sounds, I can honestly say that after watching a full day, it’s not. The event’s main attraction seems to be giving a reason for young men to get drunk and older people an opportunity to sit and gossip.

On Sunday after Mass, there was a horse race that involved snagging rings off of a wire suspended above the racing field. Surprisingly, this managed to be less interesting than the bullfights, so I made an early exit. On Monday, the celebrations came to a close with another Mass. Following that, Tamar headed off, and I also left El Pital to spend a night with some friends from my training group in nearby Suchitoto.

Later that week, I headed into the capital to work on preparing (basically cleaning and reformatting) some computers that have been sold at very low costs to schools around the country. I’m happy to report that El Pital will be the beneficiary of 3 of these computers and the school director has already decided that I will be giving classes.

As for the rest of the time, I’ve been trying to finish off my census, and I’m happy to report that I have only one house visit left. Hopefully, I’ll be able to put it to rest in the near future.

Last, I’m very excited to report that Sharon Winnike (aka Mom) is arriving. We’ll be spending some time at the beach and, best of all, she’ll be bringing baked goods!

Playing musical chairs with the kids

Soccer Field in San Jose Cancasque

Who is this very white looking Salvadoran? * * * Hey everyone.

Sorry it’s been a while, but my computer hasn’t been working well, or even turning on, so it’s made blog posting a bit more difficult. Worst of all the town’s local handyman just can’t fit fixing my computer’s faulty lithium ion battery into his busy schedule of sharpening machete blades and castrating pigs until late next month.

So what’s been going on the past two weeks? Well, both the USA and I celebrated our birthdays. Certainly, this warranted a trip into the capital for a joint celebration to which the entire American community in El Salvador was invited. Boy was I surprised that hardly anyone (not even the Ambassador) remembered to bring me a present. Still, the 4th of July celebration was a pretty good time. It was also nice to see my friends from our training group again, and hear about their stalkers, attractive community members, and least favorite farm animals (mine is roosters).

In spite of all the fun, I actually did manage to get some work done last week. In fact, we built and installed something called a hipoclorador, which is a device used to add small amounts of a chlorine-water mixture into the water coming from the town’s spring. It should provide a much cheaper way to chlorinate our town’s drinking water, and is highly necessary as our town’s water source is contaminated and we can no longer find/purchase the customary chlorine tablets.

Over the weekend, the men’s soccer team again travelled to San Jose Cancasque. As this was a men’s only soccer trip, we decided to forgo the nicities of the customary school bus; instead, traveling to the soccer game in the bed of the nearby municipality’s garbage truck. We must have been tired from standing during the whole 2 hour trip, over half of which involved driving over unruly dirt roads, so we only managed to tie our Cancasquian rivals.

This week, I again went with Tamar to a nearby volunteers site to finish our mobile stove project. We ended up producing 3 respectable stoves that should drastically cut down on the amount of wood that people burn while cooking. Your welcome, Mother Nature.

Regarding cultivation, everyone has been telling me that my corn is very pretty, fat, and will soon be giving me delicious ears of corn (see pictures). I can tell that they’re secretly jealous that I’ve also already been able to fertilize for a second time. I’ve also finally put my foot down and decided to take my marauding chicken problem into my own hands. Resisting the urge to catch and eat them, I put up some chicken wire which has brought my back yard’s chicken population to zero. Hopefully, this will pay dividends in my foundering tomato plant population.

In an effort to look more campesino, I am officially growing a mustache. More news to follow…

Tamar, working on the stove.

Getting my hands dirty. * * * I’m happy to now be finishing up with a busy (at least by Peace Corps El Salvador standards) week.

Last Thursday, after using the internet in the morning, I returned to El Pital to begin work on a chimney stove, along with volunteers Tamar and Joanna. Involved in this construction was mixing by hand a batch of mortar made from clay, ash, and molasses. Needless to say, it was pretty dirty work. Beyond making the stove itself tastier, the molasses actually causes the mix to get stronger with repeated use, as opposed to concrete which weakens when exposed to high heat. Who knew? Moving slowly, our work on the stove continued through the next day, without yet completing the project.

On Saturday, we went into the department capital, Chalatenango, to celebrate Tamar’s birthday with style and class by eating some fast food fried chicken at Pollo Campero. Actually, while it is only an American style fast food restaurant, Pollo Campero is actually the nicest and most expensive place to eat in Chalatenango. In fact, this chicken is common fare for middle class people celebrating a wedding or quinceañera.

On Sunday, our soccer team hit the road again, which gave me the opportunity to see yet another part the department. This time, we went to La Palma, which is supposed to be one of the nicest towns in El Salvador. Here, I suppose nice equates to “not extremely hot” or “selling many artisan products.” Accepting this definition, La Palma was certainly nice, as it is up in the mountains, away from the high temperatures, and is renowned for its painted wood handicrafts. Aside from these two features, the town was nice but unexceptional.

On Monday, Tamar and I left the site again to work with Joanna (a nearby volunteer) in her site in order to construct some mobile stoves. These stoves are supposed to be beneficial as they consume less wood for cooking. Unfortunately, the materials were not prepared by the community members as we’d asked. As a result, we weren’t actually able to build the stoves that day, and instead spent our time preparing clay and bricks. While unfortunate, I’m beginning to see that instances such as these are relatively common occurrences when doing Peace Corps work.

Tuesday was forgettable other than the second meeting for our children’s group. I was pretty excited that kids decided to come back after our first meeting. During the meeting, we talked about the U.N.’s Children’s Bill of Rights, and listened to some Salvadoran folk music.

On Wednesday, we returned to work on the chimney stove, and actually almost finished it! Hopefully (knock on wood), this project will come to a close next Wednesday.

Thursday, Tamar and I hosted a government reporter from the State Department, in addition to the Health & Sanitation boss, and the director of the Peace Corps in El Salvador. Apparently, this person was writing a report on what exactly the Peace Corps is doing in Central America, and the powers at be elected to visit our site. As the visit was in the afternoon, I spent the whole morning trying to make my house at least look presentable. While a bit rushed, the tour/interviews went off pretty smoothly.

Happy early 4th of July.

Here are some pictures of Lake Coatepeque

* * * I took a 2 day vacation this past week to Lago Coatepeque, located in the neighboring department, Santa Ana. Part of being a volunteer means that, while we’re in our sites, we’re expected to be “working” with the community all times. As such, it’s nice to get away for a short time to enjoy some relaxation.

Located in a dormant volcano’s crater, Lake Coatepeque has some pretty interesting vistas. Also, due to its elevation, the temperature was relatively mild, especially when compared with the extremely hot temperatures in the country’s lower areas. Best of all, the water was crystal clear, which is a complete anomaly for a country where just about 100% of all ground water is contaminated. As all of the water activities involving boats or jet skis were very expensive, we mostly just hung out on the dock, walked around, and swam.

After the vacation, I returned to El Pital on Saturday, to be sure to be ready for the traditional Sunday soccer match. Perhaps the brake made me a bit too soft, as I did nothing to help our team avoid our first defeat, 3-2.

However, the day’s sports didn’t end with F.C. El Pital’s defeat, as much of the Latin world turned it’s attention to the Real Madrid and Barcelona games that would be deciding the Spanish league’s champion. Our town was no exception. The residents were all either terribly excited or terribly disappointed that Real Madrid came back from a 1-0 deficit to win their final game and clinch the league title. It’s interesting to see people here so fanatical about two teams whose country of origin (Spain) most could not locate on a map of Western Europe.

This past week, I’ve been doing more house visits, which continue to go well, by and large. The most exciting visit involved walking in on our town’s “sobadero” (a cross between a masseuse and a doctor), just at the moment that he was putting a man’s dislocated knee back into place. Needless to say, it looked pretty painful.

This past week, I’m also happy to report that we executed the first young peoples’ meeting of what we hope will be many. The first meeting wasn’t very eventful, and only involved a brief conversation about the U.N.’s Children’s Bill of Rights. In general, I hope that the group will be a fun way for the kids to come together and learn a little bit about their town and their culture while having fun.

Until next time…

Bellarmine students looking at the newly constructed water tank.

More Bell. students watching locals make natural medicines.

Soccer field in El Carrizal.

Another view from El Carrizal's soccer field. * * * Greetings. Another week is in the books, with this week’s most notable occasion being a visit from a group of high school students from Bellarmine College Preparatory, who stopped by last Thursday. If I recall correctly, we left off at about this point in my last post…

For the high school students’ entrance to my community, I suggested taking the bus on the ferry from Suchitoto to enhance the natural drama and novelty of entering the real Salvadoran countryside. However, when forming these ideas, I took it for granted that the students would be arriving in the standard minibuses that most large groups take around the country. Heading to meet the group on the other side of the lake, I caught site of a large, white tour bus (closer to an actual bus than a minibus) from a distance, and immediately hoped that this was some other group of high school students visiting my side of the lake. No such luck, as Mr. Lauro (the group chaperone), quickly spotted me and began waving from the shore.

Puffing myself up with my confidence, I tried to play the role of experienced Peace Corps volunteer, unafraid of machine, nature, or drowning, and claimed that the ferry could easily take two busses this size. As such, the driver edged the bus aboard, amid dubious looks from the high school students and the ferry’s angry creaks and groans. Once aboard, we didn’t waste a minute, and shoved off. Traveling across the lake actually went very smoothly, that is until we reached the other side.

While all of the humans exited the boat without problem, the car was a different story. As I saw the tires spin and fail to gain purchase in the soft earth for the 4th time, I began to see my hopes for imparting these youngsters with profound, life-altering wisdom, burn up like smoking rubber, before I even had the chance to introduce myself.

Still, God was with the Bellarmine group that day, and the 5th try turned out to be the charm, as we all loaded into the back of the bus to provide added traction. Naturally, this increased the massive scraping that the bus’s underside suffered at the hands of the steel ferry deck, but did allow us to rocket out of the boat and up the lake’s steep banks.

The rest of the group’s visit, while rushed, went pretty smoothly. We had lunch, follow by a brief discussion of what Peace Corps is doing, what I’m doing in the community, and what led me to join the Peace Corps. Following this talk, we saw the newly constructed water tank, the place where I bathe, and a woman’s group that was making herbal medicine. Overall, I was happy with the way that the trip turned out. As an added bonus, it’s always highly flattering to the community members that a group of Americans would be interested enough in them and their way of life to go out of their way and visit the town.

Friday and Saturday consisted of more house visits and meetings in the community.

Sunday, was a good day, as our soccer team had an away game. Early in the morning, we piled into a rented bus (which used to be an old school bus) and headed off to a town called Carrizal, in northern Chalatenango. Riding in the morning to a sporting event in a school bus brought back vivid memories of high school. The ride itself was a bit longer than I expected, but driving through mountainous northern Chalatenango was very beautiful. As far as the game was concerned, we had great success, with both our A and B teams winning their games. Unfortunately, though, I’ve yet to score a goal. On the other hand, I should probably be grateful that I avoided twisting my ankle on the field’s many rocks, varying from acorn-sized to baseball.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were more of the same, with only Tuesday being interrupted for some serious corn field maintenance and fertilization, which attracted the interest of the town’s male population.

Hope everyone is doing well.